WOODROW FOR PRESIDENT

A Tail of Voting, Campaigns, and Elections

Age Range: 4 - 8

A mouse with a smile as wide as Ike’s and outstretched arms as expansive as Nixon’s runs a successful campaign for the presidency.

Woodrow G. Washingtail of Moussouri, born with a political spoon in his teeth, grows up to be an “all-American mouse of renown” and marries his Bess. He leads an exemplary small-town life, runs for town council, mayor, state senate and “governor of the whole state!” He then declares his candidacy for the nation’s “Big Cheese” as the choice of the Bull Mouse party. The husband-and-wife writing and illustrating team go on to describe the entire presidential campaign process, with information on political parties, primaries, debates, conventions, campaigns and inauguration. Woodrow is, of course, elected as “the hope of all mice, the hope of a nation” after an all-around clean and wholesome crusade. The entire “tail” is written in quatrains with an AABB rhyming scheme. Unfortunately, maintaining this structure often leads to awkward scanning and phrasing. A surfeit of puns wears thin, as Hairry King conducts an interview, Mousechusetts attends the National Convention and Senator Ed Mouse-ski debates. Amateurishly drawn full-page cartoon illustrations owe much to Richard Scarry, but are crowded and too full of toothy smiles.

Vote—but not for this candidate. (resources for parents and teachers, additional information and activities, reproducible “contract to vote.”) (Picture book. 4-8)